Trump's a Big Mouth; Journalists are Villains

As Trump-loving readers of this blog have frequently complained, I am not always a fan of Donald Trump's personal style. I don't like bullies and I prefer a president who thinks before he opens his mouth. I do, on the other hand, very much like many of the things Trump has accomplished: the great judicial nominations, the taming of the regulatory state, the restoration of the rule of law at the border, leaving the silly Paris accord, the annihilation of ISIS, the attempts to hurry the implosion of Obamacare by suspending utterly illegal payments to insurance companies, calling out the NFL on its lack of patriotism, and calling out the media on a leftward bias that now amounts to simple malfeasance and corruption. That's an awful lot of good stuff, and it surely makes up for the big mouthery.

Aside from a few stupid remarks that seemed to show a lack of respect for the First Amendment — remarks that have so far not been followed up by any bad actions — I can't think of one instance in which Trump has behaved in a way that endangers the norms of American governance. He hasn’t misused the IRS like Barack Obama did, or corrupted the Justice Department like Obama did, or made illegal payouts to insurance companies like Obama did, or extended the power of regulatory agencies until they became a threat to constitutional democracy like Obama did, or lied to the people about health care or Benghazi like Obama did, or behaved so autocratically and unconstitutionally that he lost more cases before the Supreme Court than any other modern president like Obama did. In fact, Trump has been incredibly transparent with the public and has generally thrown legislative decisions to Congress -- where they belong.

The press, on the other hand, in their seething hatred of Trump and the people he represents, and in their likewise seething bitterness at the loss of the election, have transformed themselves into the mustache-twirling villains of American society. If they could see themselves as they are, they would be ashamed, but because they all agree with one another, they are invisible to themselves.

This week, Donald Trump made a clumsy and defensive remark about the fact that presidents generally don't call the families of those who die in battle. I took him to mean that they didn't always call. I think any reasonable person would have taken him to mean that. But the media takes every word Trump speaks to mean the worst possible thing it can mean, and so the big story this week was not the revelation that the Obama administration covered up an investigation into Russian malfeasance in order to give Putin ownership of twenty percent of our uranium supply. Well, that was the big story but the mainstream media covered it up. Instead, the big story on the news was what the media said Trump said.